JOURNAL OF RESEARCH ON ADOLESCENCE, 26(1), 415

Social Justice, Research, and Adolescence

Stephen T. Russell
University of Texas at Austin

In what ways might research on adolescence contribute to social justice? My 2014 Presidential Address identified
strategies for social justice in our field. First, we need research that is conscious of biases, power, and privilege in
science, as well as in our roles as scholars. Second, we need research that attends to inequities in lives of adolescents,
and as scholars we need to question the ways that our research may unwittingly reinforce those inequalities. Third, we
need research that attends to urgencies, that is, issues or conditions that influence adolescents well-being which
demand attention and action. I draw from a range of concepts and theoretical perspectives to make the case for a
framework of social justice in research on adolescence.

Can we imagine our research and our field as being in
the service of realizing the potential of young people?
In recent years, I have been trying to ground
myself in perspectives from multiple disciplines and
vantage points, trying to get my hands around ways
of doing, thinking about, and using research in ways
that are authentic to two joint goals: doing good
research, and making a contribution to social justice
for and with young people. In this essay, I outline
some of this thinking. I present three broad argu-
ments that I believe will promote research on adoles-
cence characterized by social justice. First, we need
research that is conscious of biases, power, and priv-
ilege in science, as well as in our roles as scholars.
Second, we need research that attends to inequities
in lives of its subjects (adolescents), and as scholars
we need to question the ways that our research may
(at times unwittingly) reinforce those inequalities.
Third, we need research that attends to urgencies,
which I define as issues or conditions that influence
adolescents lives and well-being which demand
attention and action. I argue that we need to begin to
incorporate urgency as a criterion for what counts as
good research. These three themes are responsive
to a key element of the mission of the Society for
Research on Adolescence (SRA): We value research
as a foundation for raising children and for inform-
ing educational and community programs, practices
and policies that shape the lives of youth. That is,
as a scholarly society we believe research can do
The development of this essay took place during my time at
the University of Arizona, and I am grateful for the support of
the Fitch Nesbitt Endowment and the Frances McClelland Insti-
tute for Children, Youth, and Families. I thank Melissa Barnett,
Melissa Curran, Adela Licona, Angela Taylor, and JRA review-
ers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the Presi-
dential Address and this article.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Stephen T. Russell, 108
E. Dean Keeton St., STOP A2702. SEA 2.444., Austin, TX 78712-
1248. E-mail: stephen.russell@utexas.edu
something in the worldthat it can play a positive
role in shaping the lives of young people.
The essay begins with a brief narrative introduc-
tion to situate the key themes related to social justice
within the context of my personal life and scholar-
ship. With that backdrop, I provide an analysis and
critique of our research, or science. I then draw
from borderlands theories to frame a discussion of
privilege in our role as scholars, and queer theory to
frame a discussion of the role of science in produc-
ing normativities. Finally, I consider the possibility
that our field might value (and even prioritize)
urgency among criteria for research. I close with
suggestions for future directions that might lead to
progress toward these strategies for social justice in
research on adolescence.
ON BOXES AND BORDERS
First I offer a narrative introduction to help contextu-
alize these ideas. I received a PhD in sociology in the
mid-1990s at Duke University. I saw myself as a soci-
ologist of the family, with concentration areas in stud-
ies of the life course and demography. The field at
that time, and much of the emphasis of the training at
Duke, was mainstream quantitative empirical macro-
level sociology. The training was unquestioningly
positivist: The epistemology was indistinguishable
from the methods of positivism.1 I understand posi-
1
To be fair, there was a range of perspectives represented
among the faculty, including postpositivist, and an emphasis
area in comparative/historical sociology; my point is that
the dominant culture of the program (and field) was rooted
in positivism.
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tivism as the commitment to the idea that knowledge
is derived from objective observation and measure-
ment (science). Through the pursuit of science we can
identify truth; theoretical questions can only be
answered in relation to empirical observation (for dis-
cussion and critique, see Alexander, 1982). Locating
my training in this way, and offering a critique of it, is
relevant for several reasons. First, that tradition of
positivist scientific training, in which knowledge is
defined (and thus limited to) induction derived
through objectivity, continues in many fields
related to the study of adolescence and adolescents
today. Second, scientific and field leadership to
broaden the epistemological possibilities for the study
of adolescence still remains the exception, or at least
notably in contrast to the dominance of positivism in
science. And third, I make the critique because my
scientific path has felt boxed in by this history and
perspective. As a graduate student I sensed but could
not name the epistemological silencesthe omissions
of alternate philosophical vantage points for seeing
knowledge and the worldthat characterized the
field into which I was being trained and for which I
was ostensibly being prepared.
Much has happened in my personal experience
since the mid-1990s, the details of which do not
matter specifically, except that I had a number of
opportunities and collaborations that led me to
broaden my understandings of not only what
science is, but also broaden my thinking about the
motives and methods that could characterize my
perspective, work, and contributions.
My early research focused on teenage pregnancy
and parenting, beginning with largely demographic
approaches to identifying precursors (or risk fac-
tors; see Russell, 1994). Over time, and as I began to
stretch the bounds of that box of my training, my
emphasis shifted from a desire to understand corre-
lates or consequences to an interest in the ways that
we understand and approach teenage pregnancy
through efforts to prevent it, or the ways that we
understand it as a social problem from different
social locations (Russell, Lee, & Latino Teen Preg-
nancy Prevention Workgroup, 2004; Wilkinson-Lee,
Russell, Lee, & Latina/o Teen Pregnancy Prevention
Workgroup, 2006; Schalet et al., 2014). Following my
postdoctoral training, Lisa Crockett and I began a col-
laboration to study cultural meanings or differences
in parentadolescent relationships, both in them-
selves (e.g., Crockett, Brown, Russell, & Shen, 2007)
and in relation to adolescent adjustment (e.g., Russell,
Crockett, & Chao, 2010). Then, in the late 1990s I
began research on the health and well-being of les-
bian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth
SOCIAL JUSTICE, RESEARCH, AND ADOLESCENCE 5
(begun during my postdoctoral training; Russell &
Joyner, 2001), work that initially bridged the adoles-
cent sexuality studies represented by teenage preg-
nancy research with my interests in cultural or family
variability in parentchild relationships.2
These areas of my research each focused on
inequalities in the lives of families and adolescents:
In the cases of teenage pregnancy and LGBT youth,
my program of research brought me into conversa-
tion with practitioners, advocates, and activists
working for social change to improve the lives of
young people (Russell, 2005); those influences con-
firmed for me that the box of my training, and its
assertion of objectivity, was limiting if my work
was to contribute to social change. Over the course
of time, and as I began to push the boundaries of
and reconfigure that box, I began to redefine
myself first as an applied researcher, and then as
an advocate and sometimes an activist scholar.3
With that background I moved to the University
of Arizona and Tucson in 2004. I was coming into
mid-career as well as an awareness of the limita-
tions of my academic training for helping me navi-
gate the tensions between my official research
contributions (those suitable for university promo-
tion) and my growing desire to be in collaboration
with and accountable to advocate and activist
colleagues working in programs and policies to
promote youth sexual health and well-being.4
2
I want to acknowledge that only 20 years ago I was warned
not to be out as a gay man in job interviews or among col-
leagues, and the study of gay and lesbian youth was believed
by several of my advisors to be professionally compromising. I
am indebted to the William T. Grant Foundation Faculty Schol-
ars Award (and especially grateful for the encouragement of
Karen Hein and Lonnie Sherrod at the foundation) which made
legitimate an area of study that I was explicitly told would
thwart my career.
3
I acknowledge the tensions within our field and cultures of
science regarding the role of science in the public (Guerra, Gra-
ham, & Tolan, 2011). A complete discussion of the role of the scho-
lar in education, advocacy, and activism is beyond the scope of
what is possible here (see, e.g., Du Bois, 1996; Gedicks, 1996).
4
My navigation of these tensions is a complex story. I made com-
mitments to social justicegrounded scholarship in ways that were,
I believe, risky. I did that in the context of privileges of social class
and life partnershipas well as race and genderthat permitted
me to take risks with respect to academic and thus financial secu-
rity. As I became more engaged in advocacy-informed research I
was aware that it required far more time and energy than my for-
mal academic work (unless I sacrificed one or the other), and I
made intentional commitment to that time in the context of my
career and with my family. I acknowledge that such commitments
are not possible or desirable for many. Describing the personal
dimensions of the ways I navigated those tensions are beyond my
goals for this article, but as we say in academic articles: further
information available from author on request.
6 RUSSELL
For the last decade I have lived approximately
60 miles from the United StatesMexico border. In
2009, the 49th Arizona legislature passed Senate
Bill 1070 (Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe
Neighborhoods Act, 2010), the now infamous
(anti-) immigration law. It was also the time that
my partner and I became parents of a teenage son.
Enrique was 13, and every morning I would drive
him 20 miles to school on the south side of Tucson
(about one-third of the distance from our home to
the United StatesMexico border). Listening to
National Public Radio each morning driving to
school, we would hear updates on the legislative
session. One provision of SB1070 linked transporta-
tion of undocumented immigrants to smuggling,
thereby making it a felony in Arizona to drive a
car with an undocumented passenger. At that time
my son was undocumented: Each morning driving
him to school we would pass day border patrol
agents (Tucson is a center for border patrol for the
region). Later that summer the legislature passed a
measure designed to strip healthcare benefits from
same-sex domestic partners of state employees
(which included my partner, at that time of
16 years). The following year, the state legislature
passed the Parents Bill of Rights (SB 1309, 2010)
particularly relevant for SRA: The law has the
effect of limiting rights for self-determination for a
person who is not 18 years old or older (i.e., to
give parents full rights to make health care deci-
sions, review medical records, opt out of public
instruction that the parent finds harmful, and opt
in to sexuality education in schools). I had already
been thinking and writing about civic engagement
and rights for adolescents (Russell, 2002), and these
experiences led me to writers who are theorizing
about youth, sexuality, and rights in the context of
the border (Guti!errez, Hanhardt, Joseph, Licona, &
Soto, 2010);5 these ideas inform the framework for
imagining social justice in research on adolescence.
SCIENCE: INSIDE THE BOX
I begin by defining key concepts. First, I under-
stand social justice as the ability to realize potential
in society (Russell, 2015); for SRA, this is about
5
I am aware that this talk is fundamentally American in
many ways. I acknowledge the arrogance of the use of Ameri-
can that erases the majority of peoples who live in the Ameri-
cas when people in the United States call ourselves American. I
use the language intentionally to acknowledge then ways that I
have been working in and thinking about this place and my
space in it.
ability of adolescents to realize their potential.
Others have described social justice frameworks for
human sciences as moving from a focus on the
characteristics of young people to a focus on the
systems and settings which guide their lives (Pril-
leltensky & Nelson, 1997). Such an approach helps
shift our thinking from a focus on risk as the
property of an adolescent, to oppression as a char-
acter of systems in which adolescents live. From
such a perspective we are able to reframe the chal-
lenges and vulnerabilities that much of our
research identifies for youth. For example, under-
standings of poverty shift from conceptualizing a
young person as being poor or having limited
resources, ideas which locate poverty in or with
the young person, to a focus on the impact of
social and cultural systems that produce social
exclusion or barriers to opportunity and which
result in limited resources and opportunities for
some young people (Yoshikawa, 2014). A social jus-
tice approach implies some commitment to using
research to promote the realization of human
potential, including to effect change in the systems
and settings that structure adolescents lives (Rus-
sell, 2015). Indeed, most of us who study adoles-
cence do so because we believe that our research
can have some effect on improving the lives of
adolescents.
Second, I understand science as a system that
organizes knowledge in forms of testable predic-
tions about the world (in its dominant, positivist
form), or more broadly as a systematic approach to
exploration and investigation about things in the
world. Science is also a way of pursuing knowl-
edge based on that idea: It is a culture of pursuing
knowledge that is based on the idea that things can
be organizable and predictable. It is obvious that
science could be conducted with the goal of help-
ing young people reach their full potential, and
equally obvious that social justice is not a neces-
sary goal of science. The point is that we can think
more carefully about how social justice and science
might be more aligned (Russell, 2015); the absence
of alignment leaves out important areas of scientific
inquiry and thus areas of knowledge that could
contribute to social justice goals.
By way of illustration, I think of this as a discon-
nect between what we know, what we are able to
know (i.e., what we are permitted to know based
on conventions and cultures of science), and what
we need to know to advance the well-being of
young people. Figure 1 presents a graphical repre-
sentation of this idea. What we know is repre-
sented by a box: Even though much of what we

What What What
we we are we need
know able to to know
know
FIGURE 1 Science inside the box.
know is exciting and transformative, it becomes
part of the existing body of knowledge because it
is knowable (and thus inside the box). There is a
broader scope of what we are able to know (that to
which we have access), represented by a circle
which encompasses everything we know (because
we had access to it) but also includes areas of
knowledge that remain yet unknown. Within the
unknown are areas of knowledge that remain
unknown because we do not ask, we do not know
how to ask, or in our asking we are in conflict with
the established and dominant methods or knowl-
edge inside the box (Alexander, 1982; Way, 1998).
Consider, for example, research on children in
immigrant families, the legal and ethical complexi-
ties of which have limited scholarship in this area
and thus our knowledge of their experiences
(Hern!andez, Nguyen, Casanova, Su! arez-Orozco, &
Saetermoe, 2013); about the historic absence of
knowledge regarding LGBT health disparities
because until recently most U.S. states would not
include relevant questions about LGBT status on
health surveys (Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, 2011); or about the skepticism regard-
ing findings on boys friendship intimacy because
it conflicts with prevailing notions of boyhood
(Way, 2013).
Finally, there is a universe of what we need to
know which lies beyond what we know, or even
what we are able to know with existing methods
and theories. The second circle in the figure illus-
trates that not everything we know is needed; that
is, not everything we know will necessarily con-
tribute to the realization of the potential of young
people. There is no specific value judgment
intended by pointing this out: Sometimes we con-
duct science for the sake of knowledge in itself. But
more important in this space of what we need to
know are the everyday needs of adolescents as
understood from their perspective (Way, 1998,
2013), or the real-life practice and policy questions
SOCIAL JUSTICE, RESEARCH, AND ADOLESCENCE 7
that research could address, but that remain unex-
plored. By way of examples, I have been asked by
practitioners and policymakers:
! What is the best approach to sexuality education
that we could teach in 7 hr?
! What is the one best thing we could do to
improve LGBT student safety in schools?
! What is the best strategy to reduce discipline
disparities in schools?
These practical questions are the things about
which our research does not currently, precisely
provide answers. Of course, much of our research
is relevant and can be used to provide guidance.
Many researchers are or would be motivated to
find those answers, and our fields provide the abil-
ity to design approaches to seek answers to those
specific questions. The point is that there often is a
disconnect between what we need to know to
advance goals of social justice and what we have
to offer as scientists.
Boxed In
Science has the potential to improve the human
condition, but also the power and authority to
pathologize and stigmatize young people. A social
justice perspective insists that we acknowledge our
part in perpetuating pathologized understandings
of youth, and in creating a status quo not only in
research on adolescence, but on societal under-
standings of the very notions of adolescence, ado-
lescents, and teenagers. Consider that our field
traces its history to G. Stanley Hall (1904), whose
legacy of storm and stress influenced lasting
public and scientific understandings of adoles-
cence. Sixty-five years later these ideas were
ingrained in psychological understandings of ado-
lescence:
The upheavals in character and personality
are often so sweeping that the picture of the
former child becomes wholly submerged in
the newly emerging image of the adolescent,
who. . . becomes as a first step, hungrier,
greedier, more cruel, more dirty, more inquis-
itive, more boastful, more egocentric, more
inconsiderate than he has been before (Freud,
1969, p. 7).
My point is not that developmental challenges
during adolescence are not real or legitimate (see
Arnett, 1999), but that those ideas have contributed
to a pathologized societal understanding of adoles-
8 RUSSELL
cents and adolescence (Lesko, 2001) which are fur-
ther complicated or magnified across race and eth-
nicity, social class, gender, sexuality, and other
categories of inequality.
For a contemporary example of the ways that
research may be used in ways that contribute to a
pathologizing view of adolescence, I point to stud-
ies of the adolescent brain. In the last decade, there
have been dramatic advances in our understanding
of neurological and cognitive changes that have
implications for social, behavioral, and interper-
sonal development during adolescence (e.g., Casey,
Jones, & Somerville, 2011). Yet this research has
been misused and misinterpreted. Individual scien-
tists or fields cannot control the way our research
gets taken up and framed by others, but sometimes
we contribute to pathologizing adolescence. For
example, the idea of starting an engine without
yet having a skilled driver behind the wheel
(Payne, 2012, p. 5) has gotten wildly misused: I
have heard adult professionals and volunteers that
work with young people refer to the new brain
research, saying that youth cant make deci-
sions, or that they dont have self-control.6 My
point is not to ignore the developmental distinc-
tiveness of adolescent brain development and
implications for decision making and self-regula-
tion. Yet our responsibility should be to promote
an understanding of adolescent brain development
that does not contribute to pathologized views of
adolescence. (This example is further complicated
because it is a good example of the translation of
complex research results in ways that resonate with
the general public. However, the very reason it res-
onates is because it stabilizes deeply held beliefs
about the unruly, out-of-control teen.) If we follow
the principle described aboveasking not only
about the characteristics of individual adolescents
but also about the systems and setting that shape
opportunities in adolescencewe could come to a
different way to express these ideas about the ado-
lescent brain. When we say Starting an engine
without yet having a skilled driver behind the
wheel. . . we would follow up by asking: . . .but
are there street signs, visible pavement markings,
6
A specific compelling personal example comes from my
experience as an expert witness for a legal case in which a
school district had prohibited the formation of a Gay-Straight
Alliance club in a high school. An expert witness for the
school district opined that the adolescent brain is physiologi-
cally geared for impulsiveness and risk-taking and. . . to put
teens in a support club atmosphere. . . is the worst case sce-
nario of the blind leading the blind (Gonzalez v. School Board
of Okeechobee County, 2008).
guardrails, and public drivers education? And do
you have to prove citizenship to get a drivers
license? Each of these represents real-life charac-
teristics of the settings in which youth grow up
their access to economic and resource infrastruc-
ture (Mohn, 2012; White, 2015) as well as the
sociopolitical context (National Immigration Law
Center, 2008) that create vulnerabilities for any
adolescent who might wish to drive an automobile.
Boxed Out
In addition to the potential to pathologize and stig-
matize young people, cultures of power within
science create systems of dominance and believed
differential rigor and value across fields of research.
The standard methods (gold standards) often
invisibilize and marginalize both young people and
some fields or areas of study. First, some young peo-
ple remain invisible, or are made invisible by our
scientific questions and methods. There are several
obvious and known examples: Studies based on
school samples, for example, leave out young people
that are absent from the school setting, many of
whom have been pushed out (Tuck, 2012) or have
compelling family or economic reasons to work
rather than attend schools (Rumberger, 1983).
For multiple reasons, some adolescents are miss-
ing from our base of knowledge. Yet the problem
is further complicated because there are many
young people whose identities and experiences are
invisible because we simply never ask or acknowl-
edge them. An example in the United States is the
federal approach to questions about race and eth-
nicity (which specify categories for ethnicity and
race; National Institutes of Health, 2001). In a
recent study, we discovered that many youth were
leaving the questions blank because, understanding
themselves to be Mexican or Mexican Ameri-
can, they did not see themselves reflected in the
ethnicity (Hispanic or Latino/not) or race
(American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black
or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other
Pacific Islander, or White) categories. This is an
example of what Barbara Rogoff (2003) calls the
box problem (p. 77): Scientific standards and
practices make some youth invisible. But in other
cases, we simply never ask: For decades we have
had no health disparities for LGB young people
because we have not had the will (until recently) to
include them in our surveys (Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, 2014).
Second, we marginalize some forms of knowl-
edge and/or some fields of study (see an example

of broad discussion of these issues in a special
issue of Educational Researcher: Southerland,
Gadsden, & Herrington, 2014). By this I mean that
some types of research are regarded as more valid
than others, with the result that key areas of
knowledge are made marginal. A current example
is the teenage pregnancy prevention program
funded by the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, which identifies evidence-based
programs eligible for federal funding. Programs
are defined as meeting the criteria for being evi-
dence-based if evaluations have documented preg-
nancy prevention or reduction in sexually
transmitted infections or rates of sexual risk behav-
iors (i.e., sexual activity, contraceptive use, or num-
ber of partners). Such notions of evidence are
constrained by a narrow understanding of scientific
perspectives, epistemologies, and valuesspecifi-
cally, values that elevate treatmentcontrol design
as the gold standard (see Schalet et al., 2014, for
an in-depth discussion). Yet statistical difference in
behavior change in a treatment group is only one
form of knowledge. Decades of research that docu-
ments the ways that race, class, gender, and sexual-
ity stereotypes undermine youth well-being take
different approaches to arriving at evidence (Scha-
let et al., 2014). Should we be surprised that young
people in a treatment group are less sexually active
6 months later if the program emphasizes wish-
fully outdated gender stereotypes, classism, or bla-
tant heteronormativity (Schroeder, Hauser, &
Rodriguez, 2012)? This example shows that atten-
tion to one version of evidence or one form of
science leaves us vulnerable to the potential to
pathologize or stigmatize some young people. It is
important to underscore that although this has not
been the intent of our scienceor of our policies
it is a consequence of the culture of science that we
have created.
USING SCIENCE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE
Thus, science has the potential to challenge or to
reinforce social norms and cultural frameworks for
understanding adolescence. This is a complex
dilemma because everything in our field may be
contested: It would be difficult to identify some-
thing in the field of research on adolescence that is
NOT a topic about which we have deep social anx-
ieties (education, health, sexuality, achievement,
opportunity. . .). How can we use science and its
cultural power in a way that could be transforma-
tive? Could we take the box (in Figure 1)the box
of what we knowand invert it, spin it, turn it,
SOCIAL JUSTICE, RESEARCH, AND ADOLESCENCE 9
change its shape or break it apart or have it change
colors? The point is to challenge our own scientific
constraints in order to use science for stewardship,
rather than presuming the expertise that science
represents, and at the same time protecting against
the potential that it might be used to stabilize com-
fortable tropes of the adolescent, which often
pathologize adolescence. In everything we do can
we embed responsibility for constantly questioning
the ways that science operates as a form of cultural
dominance? And how may we reconcile our
scholarly culture and engage in this kind of
questioning?
To provide a framework for thinking in these
ways I draw from a number of theories and con-
cepts. SRA is an interdisciplinary society, yet the
scope of SRA typically remains within boundaries
of socialbehavioral health epistemologies with less
representation of cultural, historical, critical or
humanistic inquiries in the lives of young people.
Even the language of adolescence is a marker for a
specific epistemological understanding the second
decade of life (see Lesko, 2001, for a critique of the
notion of adolescence). Regarding theory, in
our field we often modify theory with scientific
(i.e., we presume we are talking about scientific
theory when we use the word theory), which
implies verification and falsification of empirical
evidence. Yet in its broadest definition a theory is a
system of ideas to use to explain something in the
world. In fact, in many fields the idea of theory is
to describe that which is immeasurable. Theory
also articulates epistemological method and posi-
tioning. The discussion below is based in this
broader understanding of theory.
I draw from three key theoretical concepts to
frame three arguments about the potential for
social justice in research on adolescence. First, bor-
derlands is a theoretical space of contestation and
relation of rejecting binaries and of accepting
both-and thinking (Anzald! ua, 1999). Thinking in
terms of borderlands helps us critically examine
our position as experts. Second, theories of queer
are based in contested notions of gender and sexu-
ality and the ways that gender, sexual, or other
identities are defined or regulated in terms of nor-
mativities, that is, what is deviant or what is
normal (Sedgwick, 1990). A queer perspective
helps us analyze the normalizing potential of our
work, or the ways that our work may stabilize
norms and meanings that leave some young people
at the margins. Third, I describe urgency as a way
to think about a force or impulse that compels or
constrains us and the quality or condition of
10 RUSSELL
requiring action (Scanlon, 1975). Thinking in terms
of urgency helps us analyze and value a balance of
dimensions of scientific rigor.
Youth and Borderlands
I use borderlands to consider our relation to
science in light of power, and the resulting implica-
tions for our motives, methods, measures and
interpretations. Gloria Anzald! ua (1999) described
borderlands theory as rooted in the dynamics of
the United StatesMexico border, a contested place
that is an instantiation of moments, spaces, or
opportunities for awareness and resistance to ones
oppression. Borderlands are places defined by rela-
tion. The United StatesMexico border is not a line
in the ground: It is a space that demands under-
standing and is the instantiation of cultural tension.
Thinking in this way, the border becomes a space
defined by relationship, not by division: as multidi-
mensional sites of negotiation, contestation, and
struggle (Brambilla, 2012).7
Be/tween. I introduce here the idea of be/tween
as a strategy for rhetorical playfulness with a num-
ber of intersecting ideas relevant to my point about
adolescence as a borderland. It resonates as a refer-
ence to youth for several reasons. First, it offers a
play on tween, that hip (consumer-based) term
that emerged in the early 1990s for the new youth
cultural period (although I acknowledge discom-
fort with the gendered, consumer meaning that
has become the meaning of tween; see Cook &
Kaiser, 2004). It refers to between-nessto
change, development, or becoming. At the same
time, the be represents be-ingness, the notion
of already being and existing in the world. We
hold these values in our study of adolescence: We
believe both in the beingness (the here-and-now)
of young people because we have a stake in their
development8 and potential. Be/tween can also be
a window on our positions of power as scholars:
We may understand ourselves as positioned
between our profession, careers, and work, and the
7 of jumping to the conclusion that young people
I have never liked the SRA logo, yet upon reflection I find it
interesting that the logo represents and demands us to consider
the relationship between the two halves. It implies adolescence
as a border, a time of opposites, but in that opposition, presum-
ably, potential.
8
Like adolescence, it is important to acknowledge that our
use and meaning of development is contested in many fields
of scholarship because of the ways that it presumes (and pre-
serves) normative understandings of childhood that position
children and youth as victims, or as not-yet-adults (Lesko, 2001).
lives of young people. As such, be/tween helps us
think about and question the ways that our work
could reach out and make a material difference in
the systems, programs, and policies that shape
adolescents lives.
Thus, the first strategy to realize the use of
science for the potential of social justice is to be
skeptical of our expertiseto imagine ourselves as
on and navigating borders (see Licona, 2005).9 The
challenge becomes how and where to begin, given
that we are constrained by training and our meth-
ods. How can we question our own authority as
scholars (particularly given how hard we work, for
example, in graduate education to become compe-
tent and expert)?
A personal example may help illustrate this idea
of questioning our expertise and authority. With
my colleague Arnold Grossman I have been con-
ducting a prospective study of lesbian, gay, bisex-
ual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) youth for several
years (see Baams, Grossman, & Russell, 2015). Our
recruitment criteria were that the young people be
between the ages of 15 and 21, and that they be
LGBTQ. After the first data collection we discov-
ered more than 5% of the young people identified
as heterosexual. My reaction was that they should
not be in our study, thinking that they represented
error (or youth whose participation was disin-
genuous and motivated by the participant pay-
ments), and that they should be excluded from
follow-up. The (younger) community-based project
leader who had gotten to know many of the youth
in our study cautioned (educated) me, saying Ste-
phen, just wait, give it a little time. Taking a dee-
per look (Russell, Fish, Ioverno, & Grossman,
2015), more than one-third of those young people
that identify as heterosexual report sexual identity
milestones (i.e., they affirmed an age of first aware-
ness of, first labeling of, or first disclosing their
LGBTQ identities; see Drasin et al., 2008), and one
in five reported experiences of LGBTQ minority
stress including concerns about coming out (Rosar-
io, Rotheram-Borus, & Reid, 1996). I am guilty of
not imagining the possibility of heteroqueer; of
heterosexuality within and as part of LGBTQ; and
were participating to receive the participant incen-
tive payment rather than considering the possibili-
ties that they may be both straight and LGBTQ.
9
Consider our name, which presumes a hierarchy in which
we as scholars are the experts on top: Society for Research on
Adolescence.

It was a time when I, as an expert, needed to put
my expertise on the backburner, listen, and learn.
What I take from borderlands theory is an epis-
temological method of positioning, of reflexivity,
and of questioning my relation to the questions
and youth that I study. In this way, the theory is
the method. I do not argue that we abandon the
potential of science (and the scientific method), or
even its authority, which I believe that we should
use. Rather I am making a call for introspection
and caution in our position relative to our work as
scientists.
Queering Research on Adolescence
Queer theory builds upon feminist challenges to
the ideas of gender as part of a central self (Barry,
2002), and on the close examination in gay and les-
bian studies of the socially constructed nature of
sexual acts and identities (Sedgwick, 1990). In this
history of a contested understanding of gender and
sexuality, queer theory expands a focus on the
ways that gender, sexuality, and identities are
defined or regulated in terms of normativity (War-
ner, 1999). Queer disrupts the neat categories, bina-
ries and boundariesor bordersof the normative.
What I mean by normativity is the normative or
shared values or institutions that constitute social
structure or social cohesion: Normativity is the
state of being that which is normal, defined by
social regulation and social norms. A challenge for
any field of science is that we long for and even
demand categories. In social, behavioral, and
developmental research, we are committed to the
box problem (Rogoff, 2003, p. 77): We want ado-
lescents to check those boxes on our surveys. Obvi-
ously those boxes have meaning and are important
in the context of our scientific methods. But if we
use queer as a verb, it can mean to deconstruct,
analyze, and critique an object, an event, or an idea
as potentially contributing to or stabilizing norma-
tivitythat is, stabilizing the norms and social reg-
ulatory possibilities that, by definition, do not serve
everyone equally well.
I argue that we should queer (or challenge, dis-
rupt) the neat categories that we think of as our
science. We should challenge our methods, mea-
sures, and motives. Thus, the second strategy to
realize the use of science for social justice is to
interrogate the ways our work may contribute to
normativities, or the ways that our research may
stabilize tropes of the G. Stanley Hall and Anna
Freud teen. It is important to clarify that in
drawing on queer theory I am not specifically
SOCIAL JUSTICE, RESEARCH, AND ADOLESCENCE 11
referring to research on queer (or LGBTQ) youth.10
Rather my argument refers to challenging the ways
our work might contribute to normativities, such as
the way complex research on the adolescent brain
might be taken up in ways that stabilize notions of
reckless teens.
How do we do this? One obvious thing is to
expose ourselves to different fields of knowledge
even the humanities and artswhich, frankly, we
do too infrequently. We can work more closely
with diverse groups of stakeholders for our
research: parents, educators, clinicians, policymak-
ers, or youth themselves. Clearly a value for stake-
holder engagement has emerged in multiple ways
during the last decades in, for example, applied
developmental sciences (e.g., Lerner, Fisher, &
Weinberg, 2000; Sherrod, 1999). I also want to sug-
gest the method by critical race scholar Mari Mat-
suda who prompts us to ask the other question
(1991): When I see something that looks racist, I
ask, Where is the patriarchy in this? When I see
something that looks sexist, I ask, Where is the
heterosexism in this? When I see something that
looks homophobic, I ask, Where are the class inter-
ests in this? (Matsuda, 1991, p. 1189). When our
research identifies inequalities in the lives of ado-
lescents, we should interrogate the potential for
intersecting forms of inequality (sex and gender,
social class, sexuality, and other axes of difference)
that may be operating to marginalize some youth,
or limit their opportunities.
Returning to the example of the heterosexuals in
the study of LGBTQ youth, it occurred to me to
ask myself: How do race, class and gender shape
the hetero-possibilities for young LGBT young peo-
ple? It turns out that the heterosexuals in the study
are more likely to be youth of color; they are less
likely to be in college; they are more likely to be
male (Russell et al., 2015). We can draw from other
work to help us understand the ways that
heteronormativity may be compelling, and LGBTQ
10
Yet issues of social justice related to the study of LGBTQ
and queer youth remain pressing. For example, on the same day
that the governor of Arizona governor Brewer vetoed a bill that
would have made it legal for restaurants to deny serving gay
and lesbian people in the state of Arizona (SB-1062), a federal
agency sent an email to a postdoctoral scholar instructing her to
change the title of her funded grant to remove the language of
LGBTQ in the title. The postdoctoral scholar changed the title
of the grant to include sexual minority but was instructed
again to change the title of the grant (then to youth). This is
an obvious recent example of the ways that our research is regu-
lated, and through such regulation some youth become truly
invisible.
12 RUSSELL
identities may be much less comfortable, accessible,
or relevant for young people from each of these
groups (a full discussion of the complex intersec-
tions of sexual identities with race, class, gender,
and education is beyond the scope of this essay,
but see Gates, 2013; Grov, Bimbi, Nan!n, & Par-
sons, 2006; McCready, 2004). This example illus-
trates queer not only as a theory but a method or a
strategy for social justice and research, leading not
only to new insights, but to the potential for more
full inclusion and representation of young people
and their experiences through science.
Urgency
Finally I consider the notion of urgency. I define
urgency as being compelled to give attention and
action based on issues or conditions that influence
individual well-being; in this case, of adolescents.
If we can challenge our own position in relation to
our science, and if we can interrogate the normativ-
ities that our work might implicate, I believe we
can better understand and value that which is
urgent as legitimate for science. Put another way,
attention to urgency is thwarted by our role as
experts and by our tendency toward the normative.
I argue that the third strategy to realize the use of
science for social justice is to value (and even prior-
itize) urgency. In the special issue of Educational
Researcher, Guti!errez and Penuel (2014) speak of
elevating relevance to practice as a dimension of
rigor and educational research. I want to extend
that thinking: It is not only relevance to practice
that is important, but also what is urgent in the
lives of young people.
Questions about the role of science in the world
are always present. Too often our field gets caught
up in our own self-perpetuating discussions of the
uses of our work. A recent example comes from
the Child Development special issue in raising
healthy children. The issue represented some of
the best recent scholarship, yet was frustrating to
me because many of the questions raised in the
issue were asked independent of a consideration of
what is urgent for young people (Guerra et al.,
2011; Shonkoff & Bales, 2011): How do we define
the evidence base? What are the common stan-
dards for evidence? How do we validate proven
strategies? What is ready to communicate given
that science is ongoing? How do we maintain
appropriate boundaries between scholarship and
advocacy? I want to push these questions farther:
What defines the evidence base, and who makes
that determination? How are proven strategies
determined, and by whom? Who decides which
science is ready to communicate? Why do we think
that a boundary between science and advocacy is
realistic or desirable in the first place?
I acknowledge that defining urgency is compli-
cated, and definitions may depend on who defines
it, and for whom.11 The urgency of science
depends on how useful the resulting knowledge is
for young people, how well off adolescents will be
with or without that knowledge, and what sacri-
fices are involved (Scanlon, 1975). I admit being
conflicted about having grants for millions of dol-
lars when there are many adolescents that simply
need help with their material needs. Yet I believe
in the potential, power, and significance of science
to yield answers that will address urgent concerns
for the future. I believe urgency should be under-
stood in terms of the range of possibilities for
young people to achieve well-being and full poten-
tial. We think so rigorously with regard to theory
and method, regarding the tradeoffs that determine
the choices we make about the quality of our work,
yet we do not think with that kind of care and
determination and sophistication about social jus-
ticeabout identifying dimensions of justice,
including urgency in our work.
I have defined urgency as a condition that
requires action, so by definition urgency might call
not only for education of others, but also on advo-
cacy or even activism. I want to close by directly
affirming that. Even if our participation is only in
public discourse, even if the science is not fully
ready (Lafazani, 2012): Science is not ever fully
ready. When I was conflicted about what to say
when reporters called me about my early research
on LGBTQ youth (which, at the time, was a very
new area of study), Gilbert Herdt, one of my early
mentors, said to me: Your educated opinion is
better than somebody elses wild guess. Because
our educated opinions could matter for improving
the lives of adolescents, many people need to hear
our opinions.
CONCLUSION
I believe in the role of science for public good. I
believe that our research has rhetorical, cultural,
political value and power. And I believe that
11
Although my focus is on researchers who do this as aca-
demic or professional work, I acknowledge that there is growing
interest and attention to the ways that youth themselves may
define what is urgent to them, and may be/come themselves
researchers of those issues (see Noguera, 2009).

science matters. But the critical questions are how
it matters, for whom, and why. Are we concerned
with the minutiae of things that interest us, or
things that matter materially in the lives of young
people? Carolyn Laub, the founder of Gay-Straight
Alliance Network, an organization dedicated to
empowering youth activists to fight homophobia
and transphobia in schools (GSA Network, 2009),
has been a friend and collaborator for more than a
decade. Perhaps a decade ago in a meeting
together, I was sharing some exciting new research
on LGBTQ youth and schools, when Carolyn
stopped me and said: Stephen, thats super inter-
esting but its not what we need to know right
now. It was such an important lesson; such a
polite yet direct way to redirect me to what was
urgent.
We need social justicemotivated research that
takes us to the borders, so that we can be conscious
of our privilege, as science. We need social justice
motivated research to queer our scholarship so that
we can be conscious of the ways that science may
contribute to inequalities and normativities that
constrain opportunities for adolescents to reach
their full potential. And we need social justice
motivated research that incorporates urgency in
criteria for good science. That will be my personal
agenda for the next decade.
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